Ian Reynolds-Young is invited to join the crème de la crème of UK vending operators as they gather at Northcote for Vendman’s second annual ‘Centres of Excellence’ symposium.
Some invitations you just can’t turn down, and the opportunity to visit Northcote is, IMHO, right up there. Northcote, as a Relais & Chateâu hotel and as a Michelin restaurant, is eye-poppingly excellent. I said ‘yes’ before I looked in the diary.
The idea behind Vendman’s Centres of Excellence as we reported in November 2014, was ‘to create something to recognise and celebrate the most innovative and effective applications of our software’, MD Rob Little told PV in advance of the inaugural ‘do’ last year. ‘Each Centre of Excellence has its own way of doing things; systems that work for them. We can all learn from the experienced of each other and that way, we make raise the standards of the whole industry, Rob said.
Cleary, the idea has been embraced by Vendman’s key customers. One by one, the group assembles in the opulent Roederer Room at Northcote and looking around at the owner-operators as they relax into each others’ company, you realise that it’s impossible to overstate the influence of this group and therefore the power that it has to shape the future of the vending industry. For the next few hours, though, it’s all about who can make the best scones. Seriously.
It’s impossible to overstate the influence of this group and therefore the power that it has to shape the future of the vending industry.
‘A big part of making a success of an event like this is to create an environment in which people are encouraged to think ‘out of the box’; in which it’s acceptable to float left-field ideas’, Rob said. Hence the baking.
I never thought I’d see Paul Ure (pictured above), covered in flour, laughing his head off. It’s a hell of an ice breaker.
‘Right then’, said Michael Vanheste, Head Tutor at Northcote’s lavishly equipped cookery school. ‘I’m going to show you how to make scones. If I were you I’d make notes.’ And so, he made scones, liberally dispensing professional tips and awful quips along the way, and we made notes. ‘And don’t forget’, Michael said as we finally got to work, ‘Nigel will be doing the judging.’
The atmosphere is intense as the clock ticks inexorably on: nobody wants to be accused of having a soggy bottom after all, and there’s no denying that there’s an unmistakable sizzle of competition in the air. All the contestants (bar yours truly) are evidently instinctively competitive. They all want to come out on top in the kitchen, as they invariably must do in their individual boardrooms.
When the guests gather for pre-prandial drinks and canapés that evening, the fruits of their labours are on show: enter Nigel Haworth, grim-face and wielding a clipboard. ‘Do do you want me to be honest?’ he asks. The ‘ums’ and ‘ers’ of the gathered combine to convey to the award-winning chef that honesty, at this point is, er… Optional. So Nigel, by and large, is kindness itself. Ish.
Allow me to skim over the fact that Steve Gallagher’s scones were deemed to be the best, and mine the worst.
When dinner is announced, as a ‘member of the press’ I leave the party to dine with Vendman’s formidable PR fixer and the evening’s ‘turn’, Stanley Accrington, in a separate room. You see, it’s over dinner when the meaningful discussions and conversations begin and everything ‘is off the record.’
Dinner’s centrepiece is the dish which won the right to be served as a Main Course in The Great British Menu TV show: ‘Lancashire Hotpot’. You can see why the judges loved it when it arrives, and then you taste it…
Talk about ‘excellence’.
Afterwards, we were regaled by a certain Stanley Accrington, who explained to guests that Rob had commissioned him ‘to write and perform ‘Vendman – The Musical’’, and went on to perform a variety of songs, many of which had been specially written for the occasion and referred to, among other things, the Sugar Tax, the AVA and many of those assembled. I’m not sure the audience knew what had hit them – there was as much head-scratching as there was laughter, but Stanley’s intelligent and genial buffoonery won the day, even though he was apt to start a new joke before most of us had had time to ‘get’ the previous one… 
The conversations resumed over excellent coffee and overflowed into the bar and as the clock stuck midnight, in the best traditions of ‘The News Of The World’ newspaper, I ‘made my excuses and left’.
Over breakfast next morning, it was clear that Vendman had another success on its hands. One of the guests, who preferred not to be quoted, told me that he saw the Vendman ‘Centres of Excellence’ Northcote Symposium as ‘probably the best event during the whole year to sit down and share best practice with other, like-minded people.’
It was a privilege for PV to get a taste of that, to be invited to sit at Vending’s top-table, to enjoy the surroundings of a fine hotel and to experience the trappings of excellence, for which I owe Rob Little a debt of gratitude.
